Author: Richard Best

Document automation is coming to a WordPress installation near you

Published by Richard Best

WordPress and Gravity Forms are both awesome. But, for a long time, there’s been a gap in what the ecosystem can do in the realm of document automation. This has been the case because either: you had to pipe your data to or otherwise rely on third party hosted services; or your options were limited to PDF output, or document output that did not accommodate conditional content. Solutions that require you to pipe your data to or otherwise rely on third party hosted services can result in a loss of control over your data, as well as potentially expensive monthly or annual fees. Solutions that limit you to PDF output restrict what you or your clients or customers can do with the generated output. And solutions that enable output to .doc or .docx formats but do not support conditional content are just too limited for any use case where chunks of content need to be included or excluded depending on what a person enters into a form. GravityMerge is changing all that, and it’s doing …

The perils for plugin businesses with no or minimal terms of use

Published by Richard Best

WordPress is a fantastic content management system. In the some 18 years that I’ve been using it, I’ve seen it go from a glorified blogging engine to a fully fledged content management system. I’ve seen the development and growth of theme and plugin businesses, and I’ve witnessed and contributed to the often arcane debates about the GPL. Through this site, I’ve also tried to help WordPress theme and plugin businesses with the various legal issues that can crop up in the use of WordPress and the running of their businesses. I will soon be launching my own plugin business. The plugins that will be available for purchase all revolve around Gravity Forms (an awesome plugin that I’ve been using since 2010). If you’d like to be told when I launch, feel free to sign up here: In the past I whipped up an automated terms of use builder for theme and plugin businesses (you had to purchase the ‘business package’ of A Practical Guide to WordPress and the GPL to get access), and I’m using …

Attention WordPress course creators – mad cyber week deal on The 5-Step Legal Plan for Online Course Creators

Published by Richard Best

I suspect many of us, myself included, are now suffering from Black Friday to Cyber Monday fatigue. So I’ll keep this brief. For a very limited time, I’m offering full access to The 5-Step Legal Plan for Online Course Creators for the madly discounted price of $29. That’s a whopping 66% off the normal price. The course helps you to protect your course content, avoid being sued, comply with important laws, and keep what you earn in your pocket, in under 90 minutes! This includes walking you through quick and automated creation of your own copyright statement, disclaimer, terms of use, and privacy statement. Oh, and you’ll get all 6 of our ebooks too, which cover protecting your course content, using others’ content safely, licensing content to get promotion, mastering your email marketing, having a privacy statement, and shielding yourself from lawsuits. This deal will never be repeated again, so be quick. There’s never been a better time or place for course creators to get their legal house in order. GET THE DEAL HERE AND NOW, before it …

What all online course creators need to know about the legal stuff

Published by Richard Best

“Make sure you get the legal stuff right with your online course.” “Huh?”, the course creator responds. “What do I need to know, and why?” It’s all too easy for course creators to come up with and validate a great idea, create their course, get on with their marketing, and whack their course up on a course platform, without giving much if any thought to the legal stuff. Unfortunately, not getting the legal stuff right – getting the legal stuff wrong – can have very negative consequences. With that in mind, and to help you start thinking about the things you need to know, I’ve whipped up “17 practical legal steps to help you create great course content, protect yourself, and keep your money”. It’s free, and you can find it on Law of Course (just scroll to the bottom). Hope you find it useful.

Online Courses and Legal Stuff

Published by Richard Best

Let me introduce to Online Courses and Legal Stuff Over time I’ve written quite a bit about legal issues associated with the use of WordPress. I’m still interested in the topic but am taking a further pause from it to focus on legal issues associated with online course creation. Borrowing from the name for this site, I’m calling my new site Online Courses and Legal Stuff. Now, many WordPress users are also interested in creating online courses, or building themes and plugins that support online courses. For this reason, I’m expecting to be writing about WordPress from time to time on Online Courses and Legal Stuff and, as such, it seems relevant to announce Online Courses and Legal Stuff here, on WP and Legal Stuff. Come on over If you’re interested in the legal issues associated with online course creation, come on over to Online Courses and Legal Stuff. As you’ll see, I’ve designed the homepage as a landing page. If you’re interested in the Online Courses and Legal Stuff blog. Here’s a list of …

Taking GPL’d code proprietary…

Published by Richard Best

The question It’s been a while since I’ve dropped a post here. Hell, I even bypassed the entire coming into effect of the GDPR (though I have written about it elsewhere: The GDPR and its practical global effect, whether we like it or not). Life gets busy sometimes. Anyway, yesterday I received an interesting question through the Ask me a question page of this site. The question was this (I’ve removed some names to make the example more generic): “Let’s say a code project has been released under the GPL for years. The original author of the project (let’s call the author Charlie) or his or her company (let’s call it CharlieCo) wants to take it under a proprietary licence. Is Charlie or CharlieCo allowed to do this, given that the original work was released under the GPL (and has been licensed under the GPL for ages) and given that the original author has accepted contributions under that licence?” When asked this question, most lawyers practising in this field can be expected to say things …

Unsplash GPL-compatibility concern should be a red herring

Published by Richard Best

The question A reader of WP and Legal Stuff asks: “There’s quite a big debate going on at the moment about Unsplash’s new license. See: https://wptavern.com/unsplash-updates-its-license-raises-gpl-compatibility-concerns It would be great to a get a lawyer’s input on whether the new license is GPL compatible or not. Is it possible for individual photos to be GPL while having a restriction on the collection as a whole?” The short answer is that the new Unsplash licence imposes a prohibition on a certain kind of use of the licensed images that the GPL would not impose, but it shouldn’t matter because the GPL doesn’t require images bundled in a distributed theme folder to be GPL-licensed and nor should this be required for themes submitted to the WordPress.org theme repository’. There is, however, a potentially important respect in which I suggest the new Unsplash licence needs to be clarified to create greater certainty for the developers of products, like themes, that contain the images as discrete files, so those developers can be confident that the end users of their products …

How to apply the GPL to your themes and plugins (and avoid getting in the shi*)

Published by Richard Best

Introduction “I wish this stuff could be easier!” Have you ever found yourself saying or thinking this or otherwise cursing the ins and outs of applying the GPL to your themes or plugins? Have you ever been worried that, perhaps, you’re not doing what the GPL requires or that you’ve overlooked a WordPress.org requirement? From a wide range of stories and comments I’ve seen around the web, I think Jamie’s story is one that rings true for many. So, if you’ve answered yes to one of these questions, you’re far from being alone and this post is for you. “How do I apply and comply with the GPL correctly?” If you feel this way, it’s not surprising. Indeed, if you’re only just getting into open source or releasing your first theme or plugin, I’d say it’s to be expected. I say that because not only do you need to understand a legally-oriented copyright licence but, if you wish to make your products available on WordPress.org, you also need to get to grips with the WordPress.org theme and plugin guidelines. And …

“I’d rather see [an] attorney’s attention spent … on clarity and brevity”

Published by Richard Best

WordPress, Wix and the GPL The Wix controversy, if I can call it that, has stirred up quite a bit of emotion in the WordPress and wider tech and open source communities. I’ve given my thoughts on what I see as the main issues in my previous post “Some thoughts on the Wix mobile app story (updated)”. In reading a wide range of comments on the various news and blog articles on this story, it strikes me that many people don’t understand the GPL, either due to its complexity at the margins (and I assure you that, at the margins, it can bamboozle lawyers too) or, in some cases, because they haven’t read it. Then, in reading further through various comments, one comment on the WP Tavern story stood out to me. Lisa League wrote: “Spending time, money, and attention on court diverts it to attorneys instead of that valuable time money, and attention spent on software. … … this is where I’d rather see attorney’s attention spent – on clarity and brevity where possible in …

Some thoughts on the Wix mobile app story (updated)

Published by Richard Best

The story Perhaps not surprisingly, Matt’s recent post “The Wix Mobile App, a WordPress Joint” caught my eye. Indeed, it caught both eyes. I’ve read through his post and I’ve read the Wix CEO Avishai Abrahami’s prompt reply, “Dear Matt Mullenweg: an open letter from Wix.com’s CEO Avishai Abrahami” as well as a Wix engineer’s reply in “How I Found Myself Accused of Stealing Code from WordPress”. The key points, it seems to me, are these: Matt has said that “Wix copied WordPress without attribution, credit, or following the license. The custom icons, the class names, even the bugs. You can see the forked repositories on GitHub complete with original commits from Alex and Maxime, two developers on Automattic’s mobile team.” Matt has also said: “This explicitly contravenes the GPL, which requires attribution and a corresponding GPL license on whatever you release publicly built on top of GPL code. The GPL is what has allowed WordPress to flourish, and that let us create this code. Your app’s editor is built with stolen code, so your …